During the session, Hall and Lightfoot will discuss the game’s development and their thoughts for the future. There will also be fragile alliances and murderous intent on display as people experience the game while within bellowing distance of one another. For the first time, if someone murders you and steals your every possession you’ll be able to look at them disapprovingly for the rest of the day. Provided they do that in the game. Hurrah!

Well having enjoyed Arma 2 I thought I’d give Day Z a go as I’d get a new Arma campaign to play even if Day Z wasn’t so hot. At the moment that’s pretty much the case, the enjoyable survive the zombies, hook up with fellow survivors and tackle bigger challenges type game that Jim described isn’t there any more. Now it’s more ‘survive the douchebag apocalypse’ as the rule now appears to be shoot everyone on sight. It’s more or less Arma multiplayer deathmatch with zombies thrown in to the mix.

There are still fun moments to be had of course – standing by the side of a road in the middle of nowhere when suddenly a bus zooms past. I tried to hail it but the comms are now so short range he/she wouldn’t have heard, and I’d probably have been shot if I had been. But by and large it’s not a particularly fulfilling experience right now, and I had the benefit of being experienced with the, shall we say quirky, Arma interface, players new to both may find the learning curve too steep to be enjoyable. Of course it’s an alpha so hopefully Rocket will find ways to steer the game into more interesting areas but right now it’s the kind of thing I might play once a week just to see if I can beat my previous best survival time but wouldn’t commit any more time to.

That sounds about right. I’ve come across about 6 other people in my short time playing and only one of them didn’t instantly kill me. And that’s because he didn’t have a gun.
I’m still adequately interested to keep this one firmly in my sights, since the development appears to be very active and highly inclined towards wild experimentation. I don’t mind being murdered a few (hundred) times if it helps to ultimately forge a better game.

Well sorry to cast a cat amongst the pigeons but surely a natural consequence of the ‘emergent gameplay’ we all claim to want is that players will end up fighting each other if they feel they have something to gain from doing so. I’d hate to see Day Z go the way of more mainstream MMFaux-es (Guild Wars et.al.) and segregate those who wish to PvP and those who do not.

That said, the old bandit system which disappeared around the time I started playing seemed a reasonable compromise, not sure why it was done away with.

@Alfius That said, the old bandit system which disappeared around the time I started playing seemed a reasonable compromise, not sure why it was done away with.

Yes, until I started playing I didn’t realise that wasn’t still there. Perhaps the intent was that more realism in that respect would induce more paranoia in which case it succeeds. Not sure that makes for a better game, however. Taking the PvP out of the game would kill the game but I’d bet that if it continues as is it will die off anyway, any game where the core play is griefing will run out innocents to grief in fairly short order.

In fact the zombies are not doing their job properly. I admit that they are deadly and fast, plus they attack in groups. But their AI is none, they act like senseless predators. You can crounch and sneak few meters around him, and even moving over the grass (witch obviously should make some noticiable noise and visual odd), but the dead people most of time act like you never been there.

Another issue related to spotting is the noises related to the gunfight, something that in real life is able to be heard from kilometers. In a situation where a bandit on a tower is firign with his noisy sniper rifle against a group of quiet survivors inside a supermarket, what should make more noise and call the zombie´s attention? The weapon´s noise or the bullet strike?

I don´t know… since this is a game (or even, a mod in alpha stage)… its noticiable that people are starting to learn with the machine´s flaws and stopping to think imersively and naturaly. Thats where the problem about bypass the scenario´s treats becomes to be only a way to pratice free (and evil) will.

By the way, how many time you don´t see someone holstering his gun to show to you that hes not in a offensive situation? That kind of imersive situations are starting to run away from the game.

LazyLiquid, I’m going to lay out what you just said there. “But their AI is none, they act like senseless predators” what’s this? Zombies are senseless predators!

Anyway the reason they currently work as they do is because they use the animal AI. If they used the human AI it would kill the server to have as many as they do and they would do weird things like find cover.

We both agree that Zombies are fictional creatures, right? And there are several interpretations of how a zombie should act, including run or not run like an athlete. But ok, i partialy agree with you… zombies should tends to have smaller perception than a human (unless if they came out of any Danny Boyle movie). Anyways, speaking based in the gameplay mechanics, they are way too much dumb and are nothing but obstacles. For exemple, they dont have almost any pattern of “wave” from anywhere to somewhere. These kind of flaws benefit the need for senseless pvp, because they are almost out of the main conflict.

Also, i pointed several other flaws that you can debate, if you want. Would be nice to share ideas of how to polish this gem.

The reason this devolves into deathmatch is because unlike real life there just are not enough rewards for cooperating. IN real life there is some large non-trivial chance you will slip and break your ankle, and if you don’t have a buddy you are likely dead. In real life there are object too heavy for one person to move, and you need to sleep sometime and it is useful to have someone watch your sleeping body.

I think Day Z would make more sense if say every 5 of every 15 minutes your character was paralyzed (asleep). Makes lone wolfing it a little more dangerous.

Ditto having say a 1% chance an hour of having an immobilizing injury. And have some areas you can only access with larger numbers of people.

The biggest thing would be to hide everyone’s identity and to not allow them to choose servers. SO people couldn’t play with RL friends and so you couldn’t say “hey that is Bob I know him”.

It’s also just not the case. Found some binocs the other day, very pleased with myself I decided to look at the distant lighthouse. Only to noticed a figure looking back at me. I crept up to the lighthouse jumped out at them, and it was a group of friendly players who had decided to make camp there.

I actually think it’s kind of hilarious and makes total sense. At first when the mod is relatively new there are fewer people around so others are more willing to help each other out. Then as the mod grows in popularity more stories get told about “that asshole that shot me on sight” (even if it is initially the same ratio of helpers/killers) so of course people coming into the game and older players start trusting strangers less and less until you just get into a situation where the default reaction is shoot/kill on sight because otherwise “they’ll get me first”.

I honestly think it’s a pretty natural progression and was bound to happen. Unfortunately, turns out that the “natural social progression” happens to be less fun. It doesn’t mean the game is done for though, only that it will benefit greatly by setting up smaller communities and having private servers. Pub matches are probably going to be terrible unless there are significant game play mechanics introduced to sort of force you to work together. But I’m not sure how you would go about doing that without taking away the freedom from the game.

It’s not down to a natural progression. It’s pretty much entirely down to the removal of the bandit skin mechanic. The double whammy of not being able to trust anyone (because you can’t tell who is a bandit and who isn’t) AND there being no consequences for murder (because there’s no chance of you getting a bandit skin) turned out to be too much for pretty much anyone, myself included.

It was a nice mechanic, and they should bring it back. Admittedly it made no sense realism wise, but it made for a more interesting game.

Yeah, that’s my thinking on it. Many on the forums still scream “carebear” at anyone who suggests that there should be a solution to everyone shooting on sight, but I really think there’s a problem.

Back when there were bandit skins, people would usually shoot bandits on sight and would be cautious around survivors. I think one of the main issues people had was that this meant there were less “do I trust him or do I shoot him?” scenarios happening, because most untrustworthy people were identified by a bandit skin.

However, the exact same thing is happening now, only it happens to everyone. Very few people that I see (I like to just watch people in this game, because it is/was interesting) will do anything other than shoot someone else when they come into contact with them. This is around Elektro and Cherno, though. However, I also travel far inland (all around the map) and still am frequently shot by people that see me. I don’t do stupid things like point my gun at them, but I still get shot. There seems to be very little “should I trust him?” occurring and mostly just “oh, a person; obviously I stand a better chance of living if I kill them”. Most of the conversations I read in side chat are about how someone was screwed over by someone who asked for help. Because of this, people are on edge and realise that there is absolutely no benefit to helping other people, but there’s a high risk of being killed by them. No one helps each other unless from a long distance (dropping items for them, shooting zombies off them). I don’t know what can be done to fix this, but if it continues, I think a lot of people will leave. Most people that I know who play, started to play because they wanted the stories; the social interactions that were so varied. There is very little social interaction right now; just shooting everyone you see and surviving.

I think it would be solvable through actual communities, i.e. servers where only a certain subset of people is allowed to join, thus ensuring a lower “utter dickishness” average.

I think this is really where a lot of potential sits, as I’ve had my best times playing some online shooters on a server that a clan sponsored and ran and also sometimes played on themselves(now thems wuz fun matches) and some of my worst on public servers where nobody co-ordinated and was just out for their own lulz, egotrip or utter “100% across the map headshot because I play this as my life’s meaning” domination.

Prisoner’s Dilemma, init. Unless they can establish a good reason not to kill people, people will presume that everyone else is a probable murderer and so kill them first. Then eat their delicious beans. Removal of the starting weapon was a good move i think, but more certainly needs to be done since it turns out that people are bastards. Who would have thought.

I haven’t managed to play this yet but it strikes me there is an interesting social experiment evolving here. Is everyone really just shooting everyone else? I can’t imagine that would happen in the real world even if all law and order broke down. There are social advantages to co-operating with other people that outweigh the immediate desire to steal their stuff. Surely the same applies in the game. A bunch of folks co-operating together should be stronger than any individual.

Perhaps, and I am speaking from ignorance here, the zombies should be made more dangerous. At the moment is sounds like the main danger is from other players but if the main danger was from zombies then it would make more sense to co-operate with a fellow player than shoot them. Maybe have special types of zombie that need many players co-operating to take down.

@mbp Perhaps, and I am speaking from ignorance here, the zombies should be made more dangerous.

Believe me, the zombies are quite dangerous enough. They can run like Usain Bolt and once on your tail have the persistence of a greyhound that’s just discovered your pockets are full of sausages. And once they catch you one hit can break bones or have you gushing blood like someone in the old Monty Python sketch ‘Sam Peckinpah’s Salad Days’. Plus, due to various bugs, they can spot you way too easily and sometimes spawn right beside you, which makes the spotting even easier for them.

Once you’ve got a weapon like a hatchet you can do OK, though I’ve still been instakilled in mêlée combat with a single zombie. The problem is that zombies are dangerous to the wrong people at the moment, the fully equipped bandit doesn’t have much to worry about as he camps with his sniper scope focused on the pile of baked beans he’s hoping some sucker will try to get to, as the zombies hang around near the baked beans for some reason and won’t bother the chap shooting from half a klick away.

In real life you would almost certainly team up longer term, and only shoot a companion if there was a serious disagreement or faced with a him or me situation. In the game as it stands it makes sense to shoot a companion if you decide to log off. Hell, if he has better gear then shooting him and logging onto another server is the sensible thing to do. Once you layer on top of that the fact that a lot of people will shoot first and ask questions later, you get the current state of affairs.

Since you can’t log off of reality, there needs to be a compensating mechanic. The bandit skin was one, but a pretty crude measure. It will be interesting to see what Rocket comes up with. He has some interesting ideas on where he wants to take this mod.

On the social experiment and social aspect as a kind of projection of a real world “shoot or be shot” scenario. The classic cowboy shoot-out is the one that had actual cowboys, in the Wild West. Turns out it wasn’t that wild with what little law and order it had.Here’s an article, the first block. But then it wasn’t an apocalypse, right? Thank gods, we don’t have a documented example of this one. But the rule of thumb goes: less bread, more blood.
As far as experiments go, this reminds me more not of the aforementioned prisoner dilemma, but of the students’ Jailers&Prisoners experiment. The short version: when someone tells you it’s OK to beat the crap out of a guy, eventually you will do it with pleasure. As I see it, the players here are close to being encouraged to kill one another with death becoming — hell, it already is — an essential part of gameplay instead of being a penalty for poor performance.

Killing for fun? Guys this isn’t just “that FPS” for me nor should it for you.

I’m totally into this game. Last night I ran 3 hours to get morphine for my buddy – it made total sense… he logged out and went to sleep because he wasn’t going anywhere with a broken leg, while he slept I ran to a hospital to get morphine. I had NO choice, because he would die otherwise.
I could feel that I was risking my life saving my friend. I could not take any risks such as:

Letting a zed near me; A broken leg would mean I’d die too, and the zeds are really good in breaking your bones on the first hit.
Other players that are hunting players for lolz.
Players that just spawned and want my equipment.

It was really intense…I was a little despaired on the thought I couldn’t make it. For the first time it even came to me as an option to kill another human being. And right now I have almost 3 days on my char without a single PK, mostly because I try to avoid players like the plague.

It’s not the zeds that are dangerous… other players are. It really sucks that most people play it like a weird version of counter strike… they don’t play the game, instead they play it like: “Oh, well, I’ll just respawn, kill the first person that I see and get his stuff, then have fun killing people..dies after killing 20 ppl. repeat…”
I breaks the immersion that I only felt in this game. They do not need to survive… that’s where they are destroying this game, they just respawn immediately where they want to be and finding stuff is so easy.
It’s like playing a card game with someone and he just doesn’t care about the rules…

How about a limited number of lives per server for each player for a certain amount of time until it refills? It could work.. I already see its flaw, but it is no issue for me… I know how to survive… but I can’t do anything against forest snipers that don’t even kill me for loot.

Well even after spending a week shooting on sight I keep bumping into nice, friendly people. A couple days ago I met a guy sitting in a church unarmed healing anyone who would come past and no one would shoot him. I threw a grenade at him for fun but then healed him up after he dodged it xD.

Yesterday I had just spawned and a guy drove up to me on a motorbike, asked me to hop on, and we went driving around for a few hours. After the first 10 minutes he even got off and told me to drive it.

The emergent quality of DayZ is the best part, I’m 100% willing to be shot at (and indeed shoot people before asking questions if I feel threatened), for those really quite regular occurrences where i join a group or make some friends… and yes I’ve made more steam friends that I regularly play with in DayZ than any other game I can think of.

See that would piss me off, someone going out of his way to heal people and make it more immersive I suppose only for someone to come along and throw a grenade at him for fun…not sure where the fun was in that.

This. So much this. Humanity and consequences need to come back. I get its striving for realism, but murder needs to have some sort of consequence. I know my character was a 0 murder survivor while the mechanic was in, now i know my murder tally is above 20. Mind you, many in self defense. It just doesnt pay to cooperate anymore. Ive beeen killed on sight only holding a flashlight too many times not to think the current way is broken. As someone said above, the bean war has ended now that the starting maks are gone, and it definitely feels like a step in the right direction, but something else definitely needs to be done. Trust as a game mechanic was unique and beautiful. I want it back. I know im not alone on that.

Most people are just like politicians; They don’t think in the long run. If you know what you are doing you can’t possibly die to a zed right know… and there is so much stuff to loot that you can have everything in mass.

Any sort of artificial advantages or disadvantages, or locking players into a specific playstyle would ruin the game for me.

Sure, most lone players don’t trust anyone, but would you if you knew there was cold-blooded killers out there and someone approached you with a gun?

When you manage to make a friend in the game, it’s special. The game offers the most hostile environment possible, but you still managed to trust each other and gained the single biggest advantage in the whole game, a friend who has your back.

Besides, it’s easy to make groups outside of the game, you’d probably stick with people you know in a real scenario, so sticking with your trusted friends makes sense in DayZ too.

I really hope Rocket doesn’t go into carebear-mode, even if the biggest concern people seem to have is the PVP. Removing the bandit skins was a big leap towards cold realism and more authentic experience. It gives players total freedom, they can kill, lie and betray without restrictions, which is exactly what is needed for really interesting, special experiences.

Once you peel off the novelty, there’s nothing in Day Z except for the world’s largest griefing sim. There’s no absolutely zero practical reason not to kill everyone you see because at worst they only had a flashlight. You kill people, take their stuff, and move on.

The threat of starting over from nothing only amplifies the problem, making everyone so afraid of doing that they have every reason to kill and loot, but no reason to take a chance of teaming up. The risk/reward ratio is hilariously lopsided in the favor of banditry.

The experiment is at its conclusion – now that people are acquainted with the game and understand it, they’re doing what they’d do in any other shooter and have a free-for-all deathmatch. Maybe that’s just how Rocket wanted it all along. But it’s certainly nothing worth all the endless praise it receives. It’s just another shooting gallery with a more punishing difficulty.

It’s a real shame this thing turned into a deathmatch before I ever got to try it. It sounded really interesting in its original incarnation, as described by Jim. It does further reinforce my “all multiplayer games are ruined by the fact that people suck” theory, though.

Yeah, at the end and despite the excellently written articles here, it’s just a game where they give you a gun. Most people will play that game the only way they know how: try to shoot the targets. Targets who just happen to be controlled by other people.

So people shoot on sight not because they need what you have, not really, it’s a game where you can scavenge what you need easily enough. Not because it’s a terrible world where you have to do terrible things in order to survive (although I do think it is funny to imagine the faces of these hard-boiled, grim-faced survivalists, these desperate men forced into doing desperate things as they line their gun sights up on an unsuspecting figure and slowly… almost reluctantly… click the mouse). They shoot you because they know it’s not a person, it’s just a silent character in a game, a character who looks pretty much identical to everyone else. You’ve shot hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of similar characters before and you know the person controlling that character is not harmed by your actions, they just sigh, spawn on the beach and try again. If you miss and they kill you then it’s just you sighing and spawning on the beach. They shoot you because there is nothing to dissuade them from doing so and because it’s more fun. It’s just deathmatch. No big deal.

You can’t play DayZ you have to feel it. If you can’t feel it, it just becomes a bad ARMA 2 mod with horrible griefers. Just stay away from NW Airfield where the exploiters are spawning behind you in the barracks and the cities where they are sniping you from the rooftops and hills…
There’s a bunch of people that are exploiting this game hardcore, even hackers that try weird shit.
I’m not anti PVP but it should be inside the atmosphere the game provides… I don’t want instant login on the rooftops in Cherno with a DMZ and so on….

Though I would never go to a place where more than 5 people congregate at the same time, just wanted to say good luck and all the best with the show. It’s great that you’re doing it and hope it’s a smashing success.

I am starting to think I am the last person not interested in either the Arma 2 engine(was completely broken and clunky for me) or RUNNING zombies(mostly the fact that they are marathon men; if they were to be able to do brief bursts of speed and power, but still be uncoordinated overall, that would sit a lot better with me).
Let alone that it would be a nightmare and not a joy for me to spend 2h running around to find stuff, just to be neckshot by the next random griefer.

I think I’d much sooner enjoy a more grim version of L4D2 with ten times slower pacing and the Day-Z like realism and pressure with the right 2-3 people.

Maybe pre-setting people into small groups would also help the whole bandit thing, as you now would have little groups roaming around from the outset as opposed to individuals.
But setting off multiple groups of players onto the same game setting likely will need some kind of diplomacy setting to not completely give way to the rape and pillage mentality again.
Dunno, regulation vs utter freedom is a tough thing to balance against actual play fun.

DayZ is the most original and interesting game in a long, long time. It has lots and lots of strong design choices that will irk people who is happy in the middle of the stream, but for some of us, it is a triumph. There is no levelling, punishment or reward structure, the terrain is absolutely a joy to traverse and the atmosphere is spot on.
I wish I could be there in Rezzed to say all this to Rocket, but unfortunately, I am not free that weekend.
And for the many who say that ARMA:CO is too expensive, well… the moment to play DayZ is now, when it is evolving every week and you can see how the developers experiment in real time with new elements and mechanics. Some work and others don’t, but they are all fun to play with.

Day Z WAS fun, until the masses joined in and aren’t interested in working together. It’s been well over 2 weeks since I found someone that didn’t shoot me on sight, so now it’s been degraded into standard deathmatch with zombies running around. It’s really lost a lot of it’s appeal thanks to this, despite doing a lot of things right.

Day Z isn’t the wonder story RPS and others make it out to be, it’s just viral marketing on a product that hit at exactly the right time.

You have a hard mod which arrives at a time where roguelike is popular again because all games are way too easy. On top of that you have game reviewers who’re bound to be on the (right before this shit becomes REALLY REALLY popular) wave, where everyone is friendly and enjoying the new shit. In a time where everyone is stocking up food in real life to be prepared for the zombie apoc.

So naturally there is a ton of positive marketing and mouth to mouth recommendation, and it makes for good sales.

But in reality Day Z probably made modding a lot harder, because all those people who bought ARMA 2 to play Day Z after reading how wonderful it was on RPS and then ended up rage quitting after 1-5 hours of being raped by other players aren’t going to shell out as quickly next time the viral hype comes to town.

What I enjoy most about this is that companies that have consistently closed their formats and engines against modding because lord forbid the community may be able to modify their precious IP now have a beautiful real world example of why they are shortsighted dicks.

I know what you’re saying, and this likely applies to several publishers, but I think their main reason for not supporting modding is that it costs them time and money to create even the basic modding tools, and when most of a triple-A’s market is in consoles, there’s often little monetary reason to allow modding.

This isn’t to say that is an equally short-sighted viewpoint, since games that do allow modding e.g. M2TW, are enjoying huge user bases even after half a decade.

As of the last years, I’d bet my will that the main reason developers decide NOT to support modding (not the same as not deciding to support it, which is just more work and time spent) is that allowing for such automatically denies any extra money the may get from a pay-for DLC. THis might be more fault of the publisher, but meh.

I must say, thought, that Bethesda is an exception: Both Fallout 3 and New Vegas had 5 and 4, respectively, hi-quality pay-for DLCs post-launch, all while releasing develpoer-level modding tools for these two games.

Plus, this an absurd “mod” to hold up as an example. Rocket works for BIS. When DICE are giving reasons like, our internal tools cannot be package up and sent out as they are and other companies are not putting the money into giving out tools….. maybe pointing to the EMPLOYEE of a developer as an example of amateur development shows the Mod Bible is trying real hard to prove its relevance anymore.How is DayZ really any different than Nazi Zombies for COD: WAW? Developers put it in during their spare time and it cost the core game buyer nothing in addition to the core game. Was that a brilliant moment for modders too? I hardly remember any COD:WAW mods being as popular as Nazi Zombies.

Also, fans are immediately clamoring for official support of these mods now because mulitplayer gaming requires a level of support most mod teams can’t afford. Has anyone asked Rocket what BIS’s attitude is toward him now? Is this purely a hobby or is he allowed to work on it during normal hours since he is generating sales?

All this proves is that game developers have no idea what audiences will actually play. Not that audiences will make it for themselves like they used to back in a simpler time of programming.

Meaning went on to cause massive amount of people to buy a game just to play it? Not sure. Desert Combat for BF 1942? CS for HL1?

Singleplayer mods are hard to measure, some might have had this kind of impact.

You could also claim some people bought a game like Crysis for mod tools, but the number actually playing mods is dismal.

It is a tough thing to measure and the impact here is mostly shown because of the most recent developments in Valve reporting top Steam sales and sites tracking numbers of players online.

Irregardless, I think it becomes a matter of a modder who is a paid developer messing around with the tools he knows versus an unpaid developer messing around with tools he has to learn. Both are technically mods, only one is really the “mod” people want us to believe makes tools essential to a game.

I see tools as great for tweaking games, but the level of development necessary for full conversions these days is almost prohibitive. So for single player rpgs, mod tools are great for tweaking… for multiplayer games though “ranking” and the flood of mp games on the market (including F2P) make it unlikely that a mod will break through to a level of popularity necessary to support.

As many people have pointed out, there were amateur mods already in the works for ArmA 2 with similar themes, just without the resources to make them a reality like DayZ.

Great idea…..and will let Rocket find out more about the + and – of his mod by seeing first hand cross section of gamers.
Think 1.7.2 ? is meant to be released tonight …..so will wait to see if some more of the bugs get squashed properly.

Lovin it……just the right mix of tension and wtf despair…..luckily I still havent died for last 2 updates as only play casually.
Would love it if more random melee weapons added as im pretty sure weve evolved enough to take down a zed with an empty JD bottle or piece 4×2

I see some problems that are backing way the players from the imersive gameplay and simply acting based in the game gaps, flaws and limitations:

– The zombies are not enough smart to spot firing direction noises, sneak on the grass noises, sight of moving bodies in small distances. They just act like senseless predators, like moving obstacles.

– Its not a persistent server, nor a persistent world. So your actions will not reflect your “karma” in the next gameplay sessions.

– For the same reason (short lenght server persistence), its quite easier to kill someone carring food than look for yourself.

– Also, there is no (or almost none, in real terms) crafting. So people doesn´t have many option to customize their apearence (except by what they find around the map). I can realize how easier wold be the recognition of respawned (new) players, bandits and organized crews or even factions only with some few more collor options for their gears.

– Speaking about lack of crafting and persistent server, people are having hard times to create safe areas (controled cities or QGs). So there is no how expect civility and cooperation where you dont see why this will bring any safety.

Of course there are a lot of more problems, specialy related to bugs. But at least in gameplay design, there is a lot of things to think about to make the game more natural and make people stop to think based on the gameplay flaws.

1) You’re right, the zombies are obstacles. This is very different from any other zombie game I’ve played in memory. Instead of chase on sight, it’s a game of cat and mouse. They spawn only where there’s loot to be found, and all players want loot. There’s no zombies in the forests or empty plains, but there’s nothing out there except slow starvation. Unless you manage to find a canteen, a box of matches, a hunting knife, and a hatchet. Then you can live like Bear Grylls.

2) While the character is persistent, it’s true the world isn’t so much, especially with server hopping. Then again, karma is what you make of it.

3) Yes, it could be worth while to kill someone else for their food rather than hunt it down on your own. But players passing by players is rare enough, and unless you’re a crack shot, it could be totally not worth the ammo shot to kill a player that may not have food, not to mention the chance someone else is waiting to pounce on you.

4) I wouldn’t mind some customization, but I’d rather keep the color coordination down to a minimum, if not non-existent. The fact that everyone’s the same means you have less readily available information to make an important choice. Is that guy looking at you a bandit? Or is he a RPS’er you don’t know? Will you take the chance? Or will you take the safe bet and try to kill him? Or maybe just run? Besides, why give hats, when you can sell them for beans?

5) Honestly, there shouldn’t be any place in DayZ where you feel utterly safe. For one reason or another, you should feel like something bad could happen to you no matter where you are. In the forest? Dehydration and starvation. In a town? Zombies. In a city? Bandits and trigger happy players. The Road Warrior in springtime soviet republic. Build a community, some folks will want to smash it down.

The more guided sociability features and defanged features, the more DayZ would lose that unique charm of standing out as a cruel but fun experiment of people versus people and occasionally versus environment.

1) Honestly i dont see many chase between zombies and humans, unless you provocate them. And then they turn from vegetables to raptors, fact. Also, you did a good point showing the pattern of how and where the Zombies are respawning, but does it really reflect the “real life” or would be only another game pattern to be readed and exploited? For exemple, i really liked the idea from the guys from ZombiU, where that zombie already was a player that died, and plus – carring a loot. In a realistic situation, unless you destroy the brain or burn the bodies, they would not stop. Also, watching 28 weeks later (Danny Boyle), i noticed that Zombies act like waves moving to a fixed direction and killing anything in the way… what doesnt happen in Day Z, where they are just chilling and waiting for the human that will get THAT miserable loot. Im not asking for Zombies smarter as humans, but just a little less dumb.

2) Yeah, and that is horrible for economics, politics or any try of reproduce them in a post chaotic scenario. But its important to, instead the game create rules and guidelines, they should give several more tools and see how the players deal with that. I dont see the “karma thing” as a lawfull or chaotic scoring, but naturaly reflecting the aliances and resources conquered in the gameplay, and its a very short time to develop in a non persistent world.

3) Maybe im a Day Z newbie, but in my gameplays everytime i was guided to a village or a militar base, and its almost sure that i found people there, and most of time causing more trouble than the vegetables (zombies). Its a study of attempts and fails, but maybe there must be a better way to balance the server than give free (but protected) loot poping in towns.

4) What crafting possibilities would we have in a scenario destroyed and full of zombies? Not many, but you coud roughly paint or mark your clothes, or even gathering resourses to produce your own ink. Would be cool to see 10 people traveling using a paint hardly maded (they would be a team), and wold be even more nice to see a bandit killing and stealing painted clothes or ink for a chance of disguise. Also about crafting… ok, Dead Rising crafting is ridiculously way too much, but i would like to figure how would be possible to create tools and weapons on Day Z scenario.

5) In my view, even a “protected” area in Day Z shouldn´t be 100% protected at all. The fear of a Zombie Invasion would be eminent, same as would be IRL. Also, the resourses would not renew by itself, so the players (alone or in packs) would need to go out and bring more amo, food, medicine… thats how i think it should be. And yet, that would give margin for ambushes from bandits and even retaliation from the survivors. Would be awsome.

Like i said before, im all against pre-patterned anything, but giving tools and making the game even more natural would only help for the imersion.

Some of the comments here make me wonder if I am actually playing the same game. O.o

I have been killed by people on DayZ a total of about 5 times. Only ONE of those was someone who killed me with intent.
Other times I’ve either been caught in a cross fire or startled someone.
The Mod is a welcome breath of fresh air that does not present blatant, pre-scripted moral “choices” at you. It’s tense when it doesn’t mean to. It’s scary without trying to be. Its FUN!

Heheh, the hit detection and the animation of death sometimes throws me. You fire off a whole clip into something thinking it’s not dead before it just suddenly drops like someone turned out it’s light.

I usually just fire the once now and give it a second….If you don’t have enough time after the initial shot to see if you killed it, you probably shouldn’t have fired.

I can’t wait to see where this is going. I’m hoping for construction abilities so you can make refugee camps etc etc. Though can kinda do that now with tents and barbed wire i guess….
Just wish I could get on the same server every time so my stuff was always there. :(

That is the exact reason I abandoned the original ArmA. I’m not interested in a game based on shooting things where the core mechanic of shooting things is so fundamentally broken. Although I’ve heard in real life people can sustain fatal gunshots without realising it and keep going for a while. But it doesn’t make a fun game. When I hit a human-shaped avatar in the head, the avatar should show some reaction!

It has got alot better since I first started playing (both vanilla Arma and Dayz). There is still a delay but it’s not as bad as it used to be by a long shot. They generally drop as soon as you get a kill shot.

Although I have had incidents where players seem to take multiple clips before dying (though this might be lag).

I actually decided to buy Op Arrow last week after seeing the previous article about Day Z on RPS here where a lot of people were mentioning how much harder it got, haha. Really.. And I’m really glad I did because it was a gamble since Arma II never runs nicely for me. Thankfully those issues seem to effect me not on Op Arrow. And I also learned that if I just set the game to double my native res and just turn AA to 1/2 I get waaaaaaaaaaaay better fps than I do on 1080 with a nice AA and it looks even nicer.. Runs smooth as butter at 60-90fps now and I’m VERY much enjoying living as long as I can. First game I made it a good hour before I WILLINGLY took a risk and died for it, haha. My lovely shotgun.. : ( I’ll remember it forever.. Got me three zombie headshots with it before I was gang banged to death.
GG.

How about a lockout when you murder someone? Everyone starts off with a 24-hour Murder Lockout Reservoir. If you kill someone, you’ll be locked out of the game for 24 hours when you log off. And your own Murder Lockout Reservoir will drop, say to half, so if someone kills you in retaliation they’ll only be locked out for 12 hours. And perhaps the 12 hours removed from the murderer’s reservoir can be added to the victim’s reservoir when they respawn. The idea needs tuning but it might be a good one.

The idea is to punish gratuitous murder while not making it impossible. If you keep murdering people to get their stuff, you won’t be able to use it, because you won’t be able to log in to play for a day or two.

Exploitable perhaps if a bandit party has the Designated Murderer who racks up all the penalty hours and then distributes the loot to the rest of the party, but hey, now there’s cooperation required in the game again!

This would break what the game is about. It’s pretty much a zombie survival sim…Not all the people you meet in a zompocalypse are gonna want to help you. Given that most people are selfish…the chances are you’ll get wiped by pretty much anyone that thinks they can take you out.

There are times where I have shot a player as I perceived them as a threat to myself…

While survivor groups are few and far between, when they do happen, they are epic! Trust between people takes time to cultivate and eventually you do find people that won’t screw you over..or you could be like me and play on servers that people actually want to play the game and try to survive instead of turn it into a zombie filled deathmatch.

Hi guys!
My friends and I started playing Day Z and we are recording our adventures as we play the game and so far I have Day 1 up and we are currently recording Day 2, where we started playing together as a team. Also I shot one of my friends accidentally in the face. If you’d like us to add or change anything or want us to make a video explaining how to do something, leave a comment below.

Hopefully you like the video and subscribe to my channel, as we continue making videos for the Day Z community.